


jobless monday

by arcanamagnus



Series: Peaceful Mode [1]
Category: Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Dysphoria, F/F, Gen, aftermath of a meltdown, autistic characters, government machine broke, it's MY au and I get to choose the pronouns, sibling shenanigans, the more utilitarian uses of plug and play
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-09
Updated: 2019-06-09
Packaged: 2020-04-23 11:11:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19149841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arcanamagnus/pseuds/arcanamagnus
Summary: Lightspeed is back early from her trip to Velocitron. Her loved ones and a few structural hassles make themselves known.





	jobless monday

**Author's Note:**

> Cross-posted from Tumblr!  
> Kicking off my painfully slice-of-life Peaceful Mode continuity with some good ol' Comfort.

"I had a meltdown in Velocitronian public transport the other orn." Lightspeed started. It was embarrassing, but she knew she had to talk it out. "I don't know how to explain it. Things were too much and I just… couldn’t handle it, I guess."

Plasma gave her some time to gather her thoughts, but Lightspeed did not elaborate.

"Let's start with what made you feel so overwhelmed. Is it okay for you to tell me that?" She prompted, voice level and soft in a suspended harmony.

"I was late. Very late. You know? For my appointment with Knock Out?” Lightspeed continued, “He had me scheduled right before a surgery so I _couldn’t_ be late, but the trains… the trains were impossible.”

“Velocitronian public transportation can be very grating sometimes. Did something make the trains worse than usual?”

“I was right at the edge of the platform and yet the wagons were all so full over 15 trains went by and I still couldn’t get in! I almost got shoved into the rails a few times. Some smaller frames managed to get inside, but I kept getting pushed around by bigger bots and I started getting antsy and really nauseous, like when I forget to take my meds before eating,” Lightspeed fanned herself with her hands, “By the time I realised I’d make a better time in my alt, I couldn’t _move_ , at all.”

She gave herself a few moments to let her ventilation system cycle, dimming her visor and squeezing her hands tightly into fists. Plasma let her be, watching her with a sympathetic expression.

“Why did you choose to take the trains?”

“I don’t like driving slow. It feels so… claustrophobic to drive with other cars at a set speed, without being able to just gun it as fast as I can. Velocitron might be a planet of racers, but it still has traffic laws. Taking trains doesn’t set me off like that. I don’t even mind being a little squished, but there are _limits_.”

“I see,” Plasma smiled, “How’s your quartex been, outside of that?”

* * *

 

“I see you made it home,” Kaput’s voice was neutral, but Lightspeed could tell from the added ninth in his harmonics that he wasn’t pleased, “Wasn’t that hard, now was it?”

Lightspeed’s plating ruffled. She knew she had overreacted when she panickedly commed her guardian to _please bridge her back to Kimia or come pick her up in a shuttle please just get her out of there_ , but Kaput’s contempt wasn’t appreciated. Yes, her frantic pleading had been unreasonable, but it was also _frantic_. She hadn’t much logic going on in her processor at the time.

But Kaput’s dry comments weren’t worth dwelling on in conversation, she’d learnt that much from watching his and Afterburner’s little arguments turned shouting matches, so she let it pass and changed the subject:

“I managed to reschedule with Knock Out for a decaorn from now."

"That's good. I'd still leave the combining part of your redesign to Flatline though," Kaput's hard expression softened, "As much as you need an ultralight frame for your spark to take becoming space-worthy, you're still a leg. I don't have much faith in Velocitronian technique to make you strong enough to carry the combiner's weight."

"On that, have you gotten news about the construction of the annex for us to combine in?" She asked, that question the bane of her and her siblings' existence. "It's been vorns."

A little over eighteen vorns, to be precise - which is a lot when you're a little under twenty. They hadn't even been modified into their respective combiner parts yet!

Kaput sighed.

"You know that's not up to me."

"Yeah, but when Scattershot went to talk to Xaaron about it, he got delegated to Skater and you know how that goes. If we get the whole medical team to ask it's not like they can't deny us," Lightspeed wringed her hands, "We're going crazy like this, you know that."

“I know, kid,” he reached up to lay his hand on her shoulder, "I know."

* * *

 

She found her siblings almost by accident. Lightspeed _had_ intended to go search for them in their shared quarters, but didn’t expect to trip over Scattershot as he laid on the hallway floor, carefully painting Devisen axeflowers along the footer. The cackle from Strafe and Afterburner, sitting on the doorstep, and the concerned shout from Nosecone inside the room signalled their team as complete.

“You okay, sis?” Scattershot lips were turned up with barely held-in laughter and a hum in ninth, and it was contagious — Lightspeed’s dazzling smile was back for the first time in a while.

“Better now. What are you guys doing?”

“Well! We were cleaning up the rooms as a welcome-back gift to you, but then Scattershot found some paint cans in his closet and, yeah, this happened,” Strafe’s melodics were still out of whack from nearly tipping over in mirth, but her harmonics were clear (and loud and _major_ ) as ever.

“By ‘this’, she means them leaving all the work to me,” coming out to the doorway, Nosecone looked down at them with her hands on her hips, “Y’should be glad I just can’t let a mess be.”

“I thought it was because you loved us?” Scattershot rolled onto his side as best as he could to face her.

“That too. But you still owe me an extra planning joor on our every joint project for the stellar cycle."

"Bummer," Afterburner jeered and flicked her shin. Nosecone kicked them back.

"Anyway," she joined her hands and grinned wide, "Did everything go alright on your way back? We talked to Scavenger about getting her combiner team to come here and make a proposal for the annex."

"Can't go wrong with those Elonians!" Scattershot quipped.

Can't indeed.

* * *

 

A couple joors into third shift, a ping came on the apartment's door. Lightspeed’s siblings were conspicuously quiet in each of their rooms, so she took it upon herself to answer it.

It turned out to be a very good choice.

She pressed to open the door and found Hotlink looking distractedly off to the side. Lightspeed rapped her knuckles on the doorframe to call her attention.

"Hey there, pretty bird."

Hotlink turned to her in a flash, flickering wings making a wobbly _woosh_ sound.

"Oh, sorry! I got distracted,” she held out her hands for Lightspeed to take, “Nice touch on the flowers."

“I’ll tell Strafe,” Lightspeed squeezed her hands lightly, “It was her idea, apparently."

"Didn't know she liked arts."

"She doesn't. She just wanted to get out of doing chores," Lightspeed chuckled, "Bet you don't get _that_ with your sisters.”

They stayed in silence, holding hands — moving not quite chirolinguistically, but with enough intention if not words — until a door slid open inside the apartment and they got yelled at by Afterburner for letting the heat out.

They moved out the doorway into the corridor, and Hotlink let out a minor seventh harmonic hum before she started to speak:

“Anyway, uhhh,” she trailed off into a suspended fourth and switched to hand-speech, “I did come here for a reason, y’know?”

“Do tell.”

“So, earlier in lab I accidentally came across a hardline setting that lets you in on sensory relays specific to our alts, and I cannot stress how _cool_ that is and uhhh,” Hotlink eased the pressure on Lightspeed and ran a thumb over the back of her hand, “If you want, I was thinking about taking you for a flight outside, so you can feel what it’s like for me. It probably won’t be exactly the same as it’ll feel for _you_ , but I guessed it’d be something you’d want to experience.”

Primus, to feel spaceflight under her own power! She'd wanted that for so long, even if it was by proxy. Lightspeed was without words, so she just hugged Hotlink tightly with a high-pitched whine in major seventh escaping her vocaliser.

* * *

 

“Are you sure this is safe?”

“About as safe as it gets,” Hotlink’s voice rumbled through her jet form, “Pretty sure the extension cord will hold, so just hop on and plug in.”

It was a bit awkward — standard frames weren’t usually meant to transport other average-sized Cybertronians, but they made it work. With legs crossed over the undercarriage and arms around the nose cone, Lightspeed figured she wouldn’t get thrown off when Hotlink took off or did any sharp manoeuvres. She found the access ports beside the cockpit glass with ease and took care not to let the extensions tangle as she plugged in. Hotlink let her into her sensornet almost immediately.

"Alright, you're in. Look for directory 6, gate 52."

Jet frames — or maybe it was just Hotlink — had a lot of sensor directories, it seemed; but Lightspeed worked _data_ , so it wasn't too hard to find. A completely new set of of environmental readings became available to her processor, along with a duplicate set of familiar ones.

It was mesmerising.

“Did it work?” It was a little disappointing to only hear Hotlink’s voice from her own audials, but she did say it was an access gateway to alt sensors only so maybe that was to be expected.

“Yeah,” Lightspeed harmonised more than spoke, “Thanks again for this.”

“No worries. Are you ready to take off?”

Lightspeed hummed her assent.

And then Hotlink’s engines came to life, a delightful whining noise that rang through Lightspeed’s entire body and made her spark feel like it was about to go supernova. When the hangar doors slid open, they shot out into the vacuum of space and all that was left was the vibrations and the euphoria.

Seeker frames were made with atmospheric flight in mind, that was fact — the array of instruments that simply had nothing to register left that clear, but Hotlink and her trine had also been built in an _orbital satellite_ and had the corresponding adaptations. Lightspeed wasn’t thinking of being rebuilt into a similar design, but the feeling of something so _close_ to being right was exhilarating and made her engine roar in excitement.

They turned a corner around Kimia’s surface and right then Hotlink commed her a cryptic _look up_ and — _by the stars_ , that was Cybertron! The sparse clusters of artificial lighting indicated the station must’ve been somewhere over the Darklands and it was _beautiful_. Lightspeed had never been to Cybertron itself, if one discounted the few trips down to use the nearest space bridge — had Kimia really been running for over 250 vorns without its own space bridge? An outrage. —, and, though she’d seen it on occasion through the rare windows, it was never like this. It never looked quite so much like _home_.

The flight ended up being short — Hotlink really wasn’t made for long distance spaceflight, much less with a passenger —, but the elation stayed with them as they landed.

They took the time to let both their engines cycle down before breaking the connection. Lightspeed climbed off on shaky legs and Hotlink quickly transformed and caught her. Their optics met and they both had the same silly smile on their faces.

Yes, it felt _good_ to be Lightspeed sometimes.


End file.
